Andy Murray says he is doubtful for 2013 French Open

When the whole culture of British tennis depends so heavily on one individual,
the nightmare scenario is that Andy Murray will suffer a career-threatening
injury, leaving the nation without a serious contender for the big titles.

Down and, probabaly, out of Paris: Andy Murray was forced to withdraw from the Rome MastersPhoto: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

We have not reached that point yet, but Murray’s announcement that “I’d be very surprised if I’m playing in Paris” came as an unpleasant shock.

The disc problem in Murray’s lower back has become more chronic than anyone outside his intimate circle realised. Over the past few days it has flared up badly enough to make him consider missing a grand slam event for the first time in six years.

Andy Murray was tugging at his left hip throughout both sets of his incomplete match against Marcel Granollers in Rome on Wednesday.

This, in itself, is not unusual. But it is almost unheard of for him to withdraw before the final point. The only previous instance, out of the 529 matches he has played on the ATP tour, came when he tore a wrist tendon in Hamburg in 2007.

When Murray went over to shake Granollers’ hand, having just levelled the match at one set apiece, everyone assumed that he had decided to save himself for Roland Garros – the year’s second grand slam, which starts in 10 days.

But once Murray had seen his physio, he came into the interview room and explained that he is looking even further ahead, which could mean abandoning his tilt at the French Open in an effort to resolve the problem before Wimbledon.

“You need to be practising and training 100 per cent before going into a grand slam,” said Murray, who was in no mood to celebrate his 26th birthday. “The French is incredibly physical so you need to be 100 per cent for that. It’s come at a tough time just now, so I need to make a decision and not do anything silly.

“I try to peak for the slams and get in the best shape possible for them. Depending on what happens at the French I will obviously do everything I can to make sure I’m 100 per cent for Wimbledon but we’ll have to wait and see.”

This phrase “100 per cent” may be more of an aspiration than a realistic prospect. Back pain has been almost ever-present for Murray since the end of the 2011 season. “I want to make sure it goes away,” he said, “and doesn’t become something that I’m playing with for a long, long time. It’s not enjoyable when you’re playing in pain, all the players will tell you that.”

If there was a sense of familiarity about Wednesday’s events, it is because Murray suffered the same symptoms at the same stage of the 2012 season. At last year’s Rome Masters, he gritted his teeth and played on to the end of his third-round defeat at the hands of Richard Gasquet, by which stage he could hardly move at all.

In the week before the 2012 French Open, he underwent eight pain-killing injections, which numbed the area enough for him to reach the quarter-finals in Paris, despite suffering the infamous back spasm that disrupted his match against Jarkko Nieminen and led Virginia Wade to dub him a “drama queen”.

It was a decent achievement to fight through to the last eight on a surface that Murray finds so unsympathetic, both to his body and his game. Yet it still only brought him 360 rankings points, the same he would receive from reaching the semi-finals of a Masters event. Looking at the big picture, it may not be worth sustaining further damage for what is a relatively small reward.

“I think the shots that hurt get exaggerated more on clay,” Murray said. “When it’s a back issue, rotation tends to be the problem. And on the clay the ball comes through a lot slower, so to generate power you have to rotate more.

“Also the ball bounces higher and there’s less stability with your movement so all those things combined don’t really help.

“When you have the injections, they can help a bit with the pain and take some of the inflammation away. But that also didn’t make me feel 100 per cent and I want to feel 100 per cent.

“I’ll need to take some days off and see how it settles down, but a few days didn’t really make a difference this time so we’ll have to wait and see.”